


things lost and broken

by Issay



Series: One-shot collection [3]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Explicit Language, Gentleness, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, Internal Monologue, Multi, POV Female Character, Reminiscing, post-season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 23:49:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9521492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Issay/pseuds/Issay
Summary: During the day, she doesn’t think about him. There’s too much to do, too much to consider and it chases the ghost of him out of her head. She catches herself on searching for his familiar silhouette on the deck once or twice, out of the habit forced by years of sailing with him as the captain. But it’s normal, she tells herself, it will pass. Everything will pass.Anne and Jack, post 3x09.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I may or may not still resent the showrunners for 3x09. You've been warned.

The heavy silence that falls over the room after Blackbeard told them about Charles is foul, rotten. It is filled with unsaid words and unmade gestures, with shame and pain and regret. Jack looks like someone slapped him. Teach busies himself with opening a bottle of rum but Anne can see the look in his eyes, the look of someone who does not yet believe in grief that touched them.

“He saved a kid, once,” she says to break the silence and almost winces at the hollowness in her voice. “It was in Jamaica, I think. A slave boy, whipped by some asshole buyer…”

“Charles killed that man, almost started a fucking riot. We had to leave the port during the night,” mutters Jack fondly because those were the good days, day of their youth and devil-may-care attitude. Days before politics and strategies divided them. “The kid joined the crew, I think?”

“He peeled potatoes. And sucked the cook’s cock.”

Jack looks at her, brows drawing together.

“He did what?”

“Enthusiastically.”

Jack shakes his head, not certain if she was being ironic. Suddenly he smiles to a memory and again turns his head towards Anne, so far ignoring Teach who pours alcohol into glasses.

“Remember that tiger skin? He really wanted that tiger skin, where was it, Port Royal? Tortuga? Anyway, this huge Spanish bosun twice Charles’ size had this tiger skin he used as a cloak, and Charles really wanted that skin. And then he disappeared, Jesus, I thought he was dead somewhere… But he came back, with the fucking tiger cloak on his back. He lost it playing cards some time later.”

“He always wanted what he didn’t have and what was hard to acquire, ” agrees Teach, handing them glasses. Then he takes his own and raises it in salute. “And in the end it killed him. Charles Vane.”

“Charles Vane,” repeats Jack, bitter tears in his voice.

 _Charles Vane_ , whispers Anne’s mind. Her lips refuse to move in some sort of mutiny, a survival instinct, as if saying his name out loud will harm her. Who knows. Maybe it will.

They drink and the silence falls again.

 

During the day, she doesn’t think about him. There’s too much to do, too much to consider and it chases the ghost of him out of her head. Of course she catches herself on searching for his familiar silhouette on the ship once or twice, out of the habit forced by years of sailing with him as the captain. But it’s normal, she tells herself, it will pass. Everything will pass, even this empty feeling inside her chest every time she looks at Jack, or she thinks of Max and the life they could have had. The most recent past is uncomfortable, like a pair of new shoes or a new belt, not broken, not used to the shape of her body. It will pass, all of it. So no, she doesn’t think about him. At least not during the day.

Nights are a different matter.

Teach was right, Charles always craved the things he couldn’t – or shouldn’t – want. Eleanor Guthrie was his crown jewel, his biggest prize, his downfall, all wrapped up in one. But for all the fucking and scheming, love and hate mixed together like powder and spark, he had other needs. Ones their kind of people does not dare to speak about because those things tend to be seen as weaknesses and exploited mercilessly.  

Anne knows many saw her as Jack’s vulnerability – but those who act on this idea tend to die bloody. Anne knows what people were saying about her and Jack and Charles, and honestly, she couldn’t care less. So what if it was common “knowledge” they were fucking? So what if she was being called a whore, a bloodthirsty demon in female skin, corrupting those she chose to touch? Anne doesn’t care because it’s good business, being seen as that. She does not shy from blood and gore, from violence and heat of battle. They’ve seen her hands, dripping with blood. They’re scared of her, those little people of Nassau, Tortuga or Port Royal. Her name means something. She’s fine with that.

So is Jack, so was Charles. But there are whispers they just can’t allow.

Which is why no one would know why in the middle of the night she wakes up, roused by some soft sound – not asleep anymore but not yet awake – and for a happy second she expects Charles to slide between her and Jack, like he does so often. Then the realization dawns on her all over again, and that awful emptiness comes back.

He used to do it, drunk and high on opium or whatever exotic shit was available, smelling of smoke and salt and leather. And they always accommodated him, Jack without even waking up, Anne with a soft smile reserved only for him in those late hours of the night. Charles’ head would end near her chest and sometimes she would fall back asleep feeling him gently suck a nipple or rest this heavy, warm hand on her breast, squeezing slightly. She would play with his hair, massage his scalp, feel the coarse shadow of a beard under her fingertips. Jack melded his body around Charles’, both arms and legs tangled one way or another with the other man’s. Skin on skin, shared air, the wordless just _being_ he couldn’t get anywhere else. No strings attached, no ugly fights, no power play. That’s what they offered him. That’s how they worked.

Anne turns to her back and stares at the ceiling.

“I know,” whispers Jack, and she’s not even surprised. Sleep doesn’t come easily to them these days, the shared weight of the world slowly pressing them more and more to the ground. She can feel it. And she also knows that he’s slipping away from her and even though she would nothing more than to hold on to him as tight as she can, Anne is smarter than that. She’s learned by now that the world isn’t fair. It’s a cold and bitter place, and she lost Max, and now Charles, and soon Jack, too. Whether to his guilt or a stray bullet, or simply a better opportunity, he’ll be gone, too.

She finds his fingers in the dark and squeezes.

“I miss him,” he adds.

“I still see him,” Anne answers. “On that road where we left him. Why the fuck did we leave him, Jack?”

Anne can’t read or write. Anne is not one of those scholars, she’s never had a lesson in her life, but she’s not stupid. He can’t answer her because it doesn’t make any sense now, and they both know it.

“We would hang beside him, Anne.”

She closes her eyes and feels her fingers slip away from his, tight-lipped and with a storm in her heart.

_And that would be worse how, Jack?_

**Author's Note:**

> So this one was supposed to be angry flashback smut and turned out to be a gentle grieving with pirate petting.  
> I don't even.
> 
> [Find me on tumblr!](http://issayscorner.tumblr.com/)


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